The School of Life

Wellbeing on Campus

 According to the popular image, most students indulge in years of hedonism capped by raucous post-exam celebrations – a privileged minority enjoying the “best days of their lives”. No doubt there is some truth to this caricature, but a recent report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists reminds us that every silver lining has its cloud.

 

Mental illness is a serious problem on UK campuses, explains the report, which is entitled Mental Health of Students in Higher Education. In the last ten years, studies have shown as many as 65% of female and 54% of male undergraduate students scoring positively on the General Health Questionnaire, which screens for minor psychiatric disorders. One team of researchers found 29% of students describing clinical levels of psychological distress, whether anxiety, depression, obsessiveness or social alienation. More recently, a survey of higher education institutions revealed that, of those who responded, 80% recorded an increased demand for mental health provision over the previous five years.

 

Why? The report cites a range of possible explanations. Financial difficulties among students, pressure to perform in anticipation of a competitive job market, misuse of drugs – especially alcohol – and higher rates of family breakdown. But the facts remain obscure. There is, the authors warn, a ‘paucity of recent, high-quality research into the nature and prevalence of mental disorder… in the UK student population’. What is certain is that ‘it is unrealistic now (and probably for the foreseeable future) to expect health or counselling services to be able to offer direct face-to-face therapy for all those who may wish to avail themselves of it’.

 

That’s especially tough when you consider that, bizarrely, another group which students generally aren’t face-to-face with enough is academics. Here the report’s explanation is more obvious: ‘Academic staff are under constant pressure to maintain and improve research output’. To hear confirmation of this, just spend ten minutes in any research department. Academics don’t agree on much, but there’s one thing they all agree on: the pressure to publish has become excessive. It emanates from the government and is transmitted via university administrators through Big Brother-like ‘productivity’ dictates – such as the following which was levied at members of Imperial College's medicine department: ‘publish three papers per annum including one in a prestigious journal with an impact factor of at least five.’

 

You might think that a kick up the backside is just what researchers need, but they don’t. Recently I was chatting to a senior academic who explained how she and her colleagues used to be perfectly capable of balancing and policing their own publishing and pastoral priorities; another lamented the fact that her publishing load is so heavy she barely has time to read: a ludicrous, counter-productive irony (apparently everyone’s speaking and nobody’s listening). Then there’s the more subtle fact that pressure to churn out papers stifles deep thinking, creativity and originality. At worst, academia has become an arms-race of hastily-penned pedantry, a situation perfectly captured in the slogan “publish or perish”, leaving researchers wearily bereft of the opportunity to cogitate in the way that their vocation would ideally allow them.

 

The Royal College’s report, in effect, advocates using one stone to kill two birds – addressing the problems of demoralized staff on one hand and distressed students on the other. The authors call it a ‘settings-based’ approach, one in which ‘the university or college is seen not only as a place of education but also a resource for promoting health and well-being in students, staff and the wider community’. I couldn’t agree more with this ethos – and it’s great to see innovative new organisations such as Mental Wealth setting the agenda in this direction. But I’d emphasize the importance of relieving publishing pressure in order to achieve the desired ends. For one thing, freeing up academics’ time will enable them to interact with students more, thus increasing ‘social capital’ in universities, which is a well-known protector against mental disorder. Why not, indeed, get students more involved in running and even maintaining their department? That way they’ll gain valuable skills and help reduce costs too.

 

But, most importantly, this amounts to a call for wisdom. Universities should primarily be institutions for educating and inspiring – thereby producing confident, considerate citizens and future leaders. Key to this ideal is the learning dynamic which exists between profoundly thoughtful, patient teachers and engaged, nurtured students. By relieving publishing pressure on academics – or perhaps by them recovering some of their old activism and demanding change – we can make our universities places where teachers can read deeply and profess sensitively, and become role models from whom students can learn the knack of living wisely and happily.

 

Ben Irvine is editor of the Journal of Modern Wisdom. www.modernwisdom.co.uk  

For more details about The School of Life's Psychotherapy service and MOT for the Mind click here.

Naomi Alderman on the Evolution of 'Self-Help'

Samuel Smiles' 'Self-Help', published on this day in 1859, was one of the most successful books of the second half of the 19th century. It sold more than a quarter of a million copies before Smiles' death – nomean feat since the population of the world was much smaller, and the literate population smaller still - and was widely translated.

Given the author's name - is it possible to imagine Mr Sam Smiles without envisioning a jolly, beaming Victorian paterfamilias? – and the associations of the self-help genre today, what might one expect to find in this volume? An exhortation to love one's inner child? Some encouragements to 'think positively', 'believe in yourself', and a general reminder that 'you're worth it'?

Far from it. The Victorians had a far grimmer - though perhaps more realistic - idea of what it meant to help yourself: work, work and more work.

For the modern reader, 'Self-Help' is frankly pretty dull. Although organised into themed chapters on subjects like 'Application and Perseverance', 'Helps and Opportunities' and 'Money - its use and abuse', there's no real line of argument. Instead it's a compendium of hundreds of stories, all on the same pattern:

1) A young man (and they are almost all men) grows up poor or disadvantaged

2) He conceives an ambition but is repeatedly thwarted

3) Nonetheless, he perseveres, and works extremely hard

4) Finally, success!

'Self-Help' certainly isn't part of our modern 'quick-fix' culture. Phase 3) of this process often lasts for decades. Smiles is wary of genius or prodigy too, saying that "wanting in perseverance, such natures are outstripped in the race of life by the diligent, even the dull.' Better to be somewhat stupid, as long as that encourages you to work hard.

'Self-Help' does contain some intimations of later outcroppings of the self-help movement, in this story of 'affirmations', for example:

"It is related of a young French officer that he used to walk about his apartment exclaiming 'I will be Marshal of France and a great general.' His ardent desire was the presentiment of his success; for the young officer did become a distinguished commander, and he died a Marshal of France."

What did the legions of Victorian readers get from this book? Inspiration, certainly. It's not a book that's meant to be read at one sitting; one can imagine it being read much more as a fortifying tonic a new story of adversity overcome every time you begin to feel discouraged. And with its praise of hard work, one wonders how many copies of this book were given by parents to disappointing offspring.

'Self-Help' has something in common with that modern self-help voodoo, 'The Secret'. That book also promises that unlimited success is just a matter of persistence - and both fail to take into account the randomness of luck and the benefits of family and personal advantages.

But in The Secret all you have to do is persist in thinking positive thoughts. So perhaps we still have something to learn from 'Self-Help' - after all, you can't change your luck, and you can't change your background, but the one thing we can all do is keep on keeping on. That is the rather grim-faced message of Mr Smiles.

How to Cheat at Happy Families

If you're curious to find out more about our Family course, we've just announced an event for Friday October 3rd, 19.00 here at The School of Life.

Alain de Botton will be talking to psychotherapist Brett Kahr and writer Rebecca Abrams about how families shape us. They'll explore the narratives of love, hate, loyalty, betrayal, revenge, sacrifice and conflict that influence each one of us, asking what makes some families happy and what can cause others to become pits of claustrophobia and resentment.

All three speakers have been involved in shaping the Family course and Rebecca will be teaching the course when it runs on 15 and 16 November. The School of Life is offering two places on this course for the price of one, enabling you to come with a family member or friend. To download a brochure click here or to book a place click here.

 

Adam Phillips on Excess

William Blake argued that "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" – but was he being ironic? Psychotherapist Adam Phillips is on the radio every night this week exploring the role excess plays in our lives. He invites listeners to consider how much of their lives is organised around notions of the right amount – whether of food, love, sex, money, shopping, sleeping, solitude or beliefs. He argues that each developmental phase of everyone's lives has its distinctive excesses: from infancy – characterised by excessive sleep and needing excessive care – to toddlers – excessively bold, and yet dependent. He also looks at greed and whether human appetites are, by nature, excessive; and how, in adolescence, the growing individual has the wherewithal to commit significantly aggressive acts.

 

Listen to the programmes here.

Sophie Howarth on Culture Therapy

At The School of Life we're committed to exploring how culture can help us think through everyday concerns. Engaging with the history of ideas may not offer the quickest form of fix, but it offers a means of asking important and enduring questions about the art of living. While debate rages about the merits or otherwise of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to help us live happier lives  - see Darian Leader’s ambivalent article in yesterday’s Guardian -  we agree with Hermione Eyre, who writing in the Independent last week, argued that the real reason to read Seneca rather than M Scott Peck isn’t intellectual snobbery but “just the fact that time is a great filter – the best there is for charlatans and cod-philosophical spam.” Read her full article here.

Meanwhile in the Times Higher Education Supplement, Matthew Reisz commended those brave academics willing to present their scholarly research in a more accessible form. His article I Can Help You Change Your Life explored the options open to academics who actually want to engage readers - and perhaps even "change lives”. The problem, as he acccurately explained it, is that “the main qualities needed by writers of self-help books - empathy, worldliness, an ability to cut to the chase - are neither particularly associated with academics nor encouraged by the structures of prestige and career development in universities. And then there are the ways that authors establish their authority. Scholars underwrite their views on macroeconomic policy or Chinese history by referring to their awards, prominent positions within faculties or PhDs from elite institutions. Self-help gurus may also mention their professorships in psychology but, along with the gravitas, they also need to get across that they understand people's everyday problems.”

Reisz picks out Laurie Maguire, Shakespeare specialist at the University of Oxford, whose book Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way; Or, All I Really Need to Know I Learned from Shakespeare is discussed on our Play course at The School of Life. When she went though a personal crisis in 1999, Maguire read her way through "the entire self-help section of the local bookstore and quickly realised that I had read it all before: in Shakespeare." The 16th century "saw the beginning of self-help literature" in the work of writers such as Machiavelli and Castiglione. As well as being a cultural icon, she suggests, Shakespeare too was "a self-help guru" and "life coach".

On the same shelf as Maguire’s book in our shop, you’ll find our own faculty member Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life and Ilana Simons’ A Life Of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living Through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf. As Simons explains: “You can probably name a few novelists or artists whom you call smart confidantes or friends. You draw on their writing for guidance at difficult crossroads--for sympathy or advice. After all, literature isn't only valuable because it's entertainment, but because it delivers memorable insight about life outside the book. We know more about love because of Shakespeare, about jealousy because of Tolstoy, about self-esteem because of Charlotte Bronte. Literature moves us for what it says about events outside of their plots.”

Sophie Howarth is Director of The School of Life

Find out more about The School of Life's bibliotherapy service here.